


loosen up and lose your mind

by shinealightonme



Series: a light in the window to pass the night through [2]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Cohabitation, Communication Failure, Developing Relationship, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn IS the plot, Sexual Dysfunction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:15:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23176801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: Ronan has no idea how this thing with Adam is working out so well and he's not going to risk screwing it up by asking.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Series: a light in the window to pass the night through [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1666369
Comments: 103
Kudos: 886





	loosen up and lose your mind

**Author's Note:**

> This turned out more "Very Stupid Angst" than originally intended, but who can't use a little Very Stupid Angst from time to time?

It's one of those dreams that tries to trick Ronan into thinking he woke up, but it's not very convincing. The room doesn't look anything like his bedroom. There's some Ikea crap a foot away from his face, too much light coming through the window, and not a single pile of laundry on the floor. Somewhere out of sight, someone else is breathing.

The dead giveaway is how he feels: exhausted but somehow also warm and content. The only explanation is that he's still asleep, so he shuts his eyes and doesn't get out of bed. He drifts, neither awake nor asleep, until an alarm starts beeping from the bedside table and an arm reaches across him to shut it off.

He rolls over and -- 

"Oh," Adam says. "Morning."

Right. This isn't a dream. It's just Gansey's gorgeous brilliant friend who'd driven his car, jerked him off in it, and then asked him to stay the night.

How is this not a dream?

"Hey."

Adam looks about as stumped at finding Ronan in his bed as Ronan is at being there. Apparently his fallback mode is _polite_. "Did you sleep okay?"

No, and now it's coming back to him why he's exhausted. "If I complain to management about how shitty the mattress is, do I get a refund?"

"It can't compete with the comfort and safety of _sleeping in your car_ on the side of the freeway, but your standards are too high."

Ronan snorts. Adam grins, one corner of his mouth curling up in victory. It makes Ronan want to do something stupid and impulsive -- and why shouldn't he? This thing with Adam has been out of control since the start. He might as well turn into the slide.

He leans forward and kisses Adam's shoulder. Leans in more and kisses his collarbone and the base of his throat, feels him swallow hard. He works his way up his neck, his jaw, his cheek. By the time he gets to his mouth Adam is not smirking anymore. He kisses Ronan back deeply, uses the arm around him to pull him in closer and then digs his fingers into his back like he's holding him in place.

Ronan isn't going _anywhere_. This is so damn good, better than it has any right to be: he's tired, the mattress under him is lumpy, the blinds are doing a crappy job at keeping the sun out of his face, he's sure he has morning breath. And yet he can't think about any of those things for more a heartbeat, not when he has Adam's mouth on his and Adam's hair running through his fingers and Adam's skin hot against his. His cock twitches, and Adam grins with a soft exhale and bucks up against him.

Ronan rolls Adam onto his back and straddles him. It feels pretty fucking great to have flipped the tables on Adam after being pinned under him last night, to have his hands on the bed next to Adam's head, to look down at him and take his time while he decides, out of the many equally delightful options available, what he wants to do next.

A second alarm goes off.

The arousal disappears from Adam's face. "I'm going to be late."

"Oh." Ronan swings his leg back over him. Adam's out of bed like a shot, grabbing a pair of boxers out of a drawer and tugging them on before Ronan's fully processed that he's not getting laid this morning. "How long do you have?"

Adam grimaces and hops into a pair of jeans. "That's the alarm to tell me it's time to leave."

"Fuck. Sorry."

Adam kisses him once, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it peck that Ronan has no chance to return, and disappears off into the bathroom.

Ronan walks over to the door. It was a lot less weird being undressed when Adam was making out with him than it is now when Adam is brushing his teeth too fast to actually be cleaning them. "How far is it to campus?"

Adam holds up five fingers, which tells Ronan nothing -- five minutes? five miles? -- before he spits in the sink. "Five stops on the subway, but then I have to walk to the far side of campus."

"Would it be faster if I gave you a ride?"

Adam falls completely still, the first moment since his alarm went off that he wasn't in rapid motion. "You'd do that?"

He doesn't get why that's surprising. He's the reason Adam's late, so he ought to fix it. And he really wants to spend another five-subway-stops' worth of time together. But if Adam doesn't get that, he doesn't know that he can say it. He shrugs. "You can make it up to me."

Adam kisses him again, minty fresh and long enough that Ronan can actually kiss him back this time. As far as Ronan is concerned that makes them more than even, but when they're in his car, Adam gnawing on a breakfast bar and Ronan wearing yesterday's pants and a jacket with no shirt underneath, Adam says, "my last class ends at two, if you want to do a late lunch."

Of fucking course Ronan wants to. "Yeah, sure."

"Great. I -- thanks, really," and oh. Right. This is Adam making it up to him for the ride: he's going to buy him lunch.

It doesn't occur to Ronan until he's watched a thoroughly-kissed Adam disappear into an ivy-covered cliche of a brick building that he's just committed himself to hanging out in Boston alone on a Monday.

He's not going to _leave_ , though, so he figures he'll just drive around until he finds something to do.

Driving is a mistake. Every intersection is an abomination and every street has a construction crew. He'd give up and pull over, except he can't see anywhere to park. He's kind of amazed in retrospect that they found somewhere to pull over and have sex last night, and shit now he's thinking about last night and he just turned the wrong way down a one-way street, which would be less of a fucking problem if every damn street in this city weren't two feet wide.

All he manages to accomplish before two o'clock is getting lost so badly that he has to pull his phone out and look up directions to Harvard. He hates telling his phone where he's going.

"I realized about five seconds after I got to class that I didn't have your number," Adam says as he gets in the car. "I'm glad you found me."

Ronan hands Adam his phone and says "here, add yourself" because otherwise he'd say _I'm glad I found you, too_. He hopes Adam doesn't notice how few contacts he has saved down. "Where do you want to go?"

"Home?" Adam sounds puzzled by the question. "Oh. For lunch."

"That was the plan, right?"

"No, it was." He types into the phone with an awful lot of focus for just entering his own number. "I'm mostly broke most of the time. Yesterday wiped me out for restaurants."

"You want to cook for me?" Ronan has a way of sounding sarcastic when he doesn't mean to. It's gotten him a lot of shit from Gansey and Declan over the years. Right now he's glad that he doesn't sound as impressed as he feels.

Adam shrugs. "If that's okay with you."

He's even more impressed when they get back to the apartment and Adam starts throwing shit together to make omelets. He moves around the kitchen with the same kind of deliberate confidence he'd had asking to drive the BMW last night. Ronan is suddenly, painfully into that.

He steps up behind Adam, close enough to put his hands on his sides and nose at his hair.

Adam leans back into him for a second and then goes back to cooking, pours the eggs into the pan on the stove. Fuck, he's so collected. Ronan likes that. He'd like it if he could throw Adam off but he also likes it if he can't, if Adam just keeps being amazing.

It occurs to him that right now, standing in this kitchen with his hands on Adam, there is no bad outcome.

He sighs. A shiver passes through Adam. Ronan kisses the back of his neck.

Adam puts his spatula down on the counter, slow and careful, and then spins around to face him.

By the time Ronan smells something burning, he's got his hands up Adam's shirt and Adam fingers toying with waistband of his jeans. He groans, because he doesn't want to _stop_. Adam doesn't stop, though, just fumbles around one-handed to flip the stove off and move the skillet off of the heat, and then he wraps his arm around Ronan's shoulders. Ronan swears and bites his lip to feel him gasp, grinds up against him to make him do it again.

Adam pushes him away and appraises him for a second. "Bedroom."

They strip their shirts off on the way. As soon as they get to the bed Adam shoves him again, down onto it. Ronan grins at how forward and open and hungry he is. Adam climbs into bed with him.

Ronan toys with the button on Adam's jeans. "I want these off."

"Then you should take them off."

"You gonna give me hand?"

Adam runs his hand across Ronan's chest and down to his crotch, palm resting warm against his hard on. Ronan jerks his hips up, _"fuck,"_ and Adam draws back up onto his knees with an exhale like half of a laugh. Ronan thinks, not for the first time, that he needs to make Adam really laugh, and then he thinks that that's going to have to wait for some moment that they're not having sex and his brain is on. In the meantime he unzips his fly and wriggles out of his jeans while Adam strips above him.

Adam trails his hand down Ronan's chest again, slower this time, his eyes watchful and curious. He's got the right idea; Ronan didn't get to touch him nearly enough in the car last night. He runs his hands up Adam's arms, his shoulders, down his sides, ends by taking a solid hold of Adam's hips. He tugs him so he shifts to hover over Ronan, one knee on the mattress between Ronan's thighs.

Adam brushes his thumb over Ronan's nipple. Apparently he likes the reaction that gets, because he does it again, _lighter_ , and Ronan arches up off the bed trying to get more, dammit. When he doesn't get it he runs a hand spitefully down Adam's thigh, even more slowly back up to grope his ass, keeps a tight grip on Adam with his other hand and draws a line with his thumb over his hipbone.

That gets to him; Adam is starting to look more flushed and less composed. He lowers his face to kiss Ronan's chest. Ronan kisses his temple and his ear and whatever parts of him he can reach until Adam finally turns his face up and kisses his mouth.

Ronan pulls Adam closer down onto the mattress, down onto him, and fuck, fuck, this is what he's been waiting for all day, and yesterday, and he didn't even know it: touching in as many places as possible, sliding his tongue inside of Adam, breathing the air that just left his lungs, getting weighed down onto sheets that smell like Adam, so that Ronan is completely surrounded by him.

Adam's thigh presses heavy against his cock. Ronan thrusts up against it with a groan, hears Adam groan at the same time when the movement pushes Adam's cock hard against his leg.

" _Shit_ ," Ronan hisses.

"Shit," Adam agrees, before he captures Ronan's mouth with his again.

They rub up against each other until they find a perfect rhythm. Ronan gets lost in it, almost too far. He realizes he's panting and his cock is leaking all over his stomach and onto Adam's stomach. He's so close to coming. It's just -- he doesn't want it to be _over_. He doesn't want his time with Adam to be ending.

It takes a bit of work to get a hand between them and onto Adam's chest, but he manages, pushes Adam up and off him. Adam lands on his back, and _fuck_ , Ronan had seen him lying on the bed last night, this morning, but it's a whole other experience when his eyes are bright and he's grinning a wild daredevil grin.

Ronan likes that expression too much to interfere with it. He runs his tongue across Adam's chest instead, tracing the line of his collarbones, licking his nipples. That gets another faint laugh from Adam, like it tickles. Not exactly what Ronan is going for. He moves on, grazes his teeth lightly over Adam's hip bones, kisses the inside of one thigh and then the other. By that point Adam's hips are moving in tiny helpless thrusts, so Ronan decides to indulge him, puts his lips on the head of his cock and takes it into his mouth.

"Oh." Adam whimpers, almost sounding pained. "Ronan."

He likes hearing Adam say his name.

Ronan hasn't sucked a lot of cock before, so his technique's maybe not _refined,_ but what the hell, it's right there in the name. He takes Adam's cock as far back as he can and then he sucks. From the way Adam gasps and spreads his knees out wider, that did the trick.

He can't really keep Adam that deep, so he grips the base of his cock and works his mouth up and down the shaft. He still hasn't gotten enough of touching Adam. He runs his other hand along his ass, down his thighs, up to his stomach to feel the muscles twitching under his skin. He can't decide what he likes best, so he just tries to figure what Adam likes best.

Adam doesn't make that very clear. He's vocal, but he's vocal about _everything_ , panting and moaning and occasionally saying _Ronan_ again, each time like a hot iron pressed against his soul.

Then he gets less vocal. Ronan wonders if he missed some cue, if there's something Adam wants that he's not doing. He tries taking Adam deep again but doesn't get a reaction -- and then he realizes that Adam isn't just quiet, he's _silent._

Ronan jerks his head up, alarmed. Adam's face is tilted away from him, toward the ceiling. When Ronan props himself up he can see Adam's eyes squeezed shut, hair gripped tight in one fist. His legs are tense around Ronan, holding him motionless.

"Shit, is this okay?" Ronan blurts out. "I thought -- did you want me to stop?"

"It's fine, Ronan. You didn't do anything wrong," but his voice doesn't fit the words. He sounds stressed and miserable and not at all like a guy who was about to get off.

Because, right, he _wasn't_. Adam warned him about this and he couldn't fucking recognize it happening right in front of him.

Ronan drags himself up to the head of the bed and lies next to Adam. "Hey," he says, soft, and waits until Adam opens his eyes. "Nobody has to get off."

A look of sharp unhappiness crosses Adam's face. "This isn't your problem. You should still get what you want out of this."

Ronan rests a hand on his cheek, as chaste as he can be when he can still taste Adam's cock in his mouth. He doesn't know if he's supposed to say it, but it's true, so fuck it: "what I really want to do is kiss you, okay?"

Adam is wound so tight. Ronan can feel him getting ready to do something desperate. He doesn't know what that would look like, though, if Adam would kick him out of bed or if he'd _keep going_.

In the end he doesn't bolt. He doesn't keep pushing. His hand loosens from his hair and drops down to his side. His body is still tense all over, but he breathes in deep before he turns his face up. He lets Ronan cup his face in one hand and kiss him. He even puts a hand on Ronan's back, holding him a little closer, although his arm is light on Ronan's side like he doesn't want to rest any weight on him. Ronan doesn't try to push him, just focuses on the slow, careful way that Adam returns his kiss.

The thing about slow is that it lasts. The kiss goes on and on and Ronan gets to just float in it. The only real sign that time is passing is that Adam will pull away occasionally to give him this puzzled look, like he's waiting for Ronan's real game to emerge.

But this _is_ his real game. He loved the sweat and friction and pounding hearts earlier, but he loves this too: easy caresses across Adam's back, the low quiet murmur of them breathing together, the warm brush of his lips over Adam's. His erection fades and he barely notices, except as part of how soft everything in the world has gotten, until even kissing is too much work and he curls up around Adam just lying there soaking him up.

Adam nuzzles his chest lazily and sighs once. He sounds _content_. Ronan tucks his chin on top of his head and shuts his eyes, equally content.

By the time they wake up it is way too late for lunch. 

"I guess I owe you dinner instead." Adam grimaces. "Unless you're in a rush."

"I probably shouldn't head out too late." Is Ronan imagining things, or does Adam look disappointed by that? "I'd have to stay the night."

"Yeah?" Adam says, and then again with more confidence: "Yeah. I guess you'd have to."

They make dinner -- or, Adam makes dinner and Ronan helps by keeping his hands to himself. He's fucking starving now that he thinks about it. He shoves food in his mouth too fast to make conversation and then regrets it once they're done eating, because Adam immediately switches over to doing schoolwork. Ronan had kind of figured that getting to spend more time with Adam meant he'd get to spend more time _with Adam._

But since he has to entertain himself he starts by poking around Adam's apartment. At first glance there isn't much to explore; the whole damn apartment is one big room, living room melting into bedroom melting into kitchen, but Adam has crammed a surprising amount of stuff into the space without it even looking that messy. The bookshelf by the couch has two rows of books on every shelf. He digs around until he finds a beat up copy of the Metamorphoses with notes scribbled in the margins.

There's a mistake in one of the translations. Ronan idly picks up a pen off the kitchen table and corrects it.

He's on Book III before Adam realizes what he's doing, which is really the first time that _Ronan_ realizes what he's doing, but it's not his style to apologize for defacing someone else's property.

Adam doesn't even look surprised. He raises an eyebrow, in a _really, dude?_ kind of way, and takes the book out of his hands.

"Do you mind?" Ronan asks. "I was in the middle of that."

"Whether or not I mind is going to depend on how good your Latin is." Adam flips through a few pages. "Huh."

Ronan refuses to feel any anxiety about that _huh_. "What?"

"Why did you write 'Narcissus = dick'?"

So Ronan had maybe added some color commentary to his annotations. "Because he's a dick."

Adam shakes his head but hands the book back to him.

Ronan asks "so my Latin passes your standards?"

"Maybe I just want to see what you say about Jason." Adam goes back to his laptop. Ronan goes back to writing all over the book, since he wasn't told not to.

His sleep schedule's always been weird, plus he had a long-ass nap that afternoon, so he notices Adam getting tired before he feels it himself. Adam keeps rubbing at his eyes and spacing out, only to start typing again like he's not aware it happened.

Ronan gets up from the table and throws himself across the bed. That fails to get Adam's attention. He chucks Ovid at him and it lands on the table with a slap.

Adam jumps.

"Do I get to sleep at any point or are you going to keep the light on all night?"

Adam blinks at him and darts his eyes back down to his screen, blatantly checking the clock. Not that he admits to having no idea what time it is. "Relax." He shuts the laptop. "You're not going to die in the next five minutes."

"I might. You don't know."

Adam disappears into the bathroom, comes back out and finds Ronan has already slid under the covers. "Aren't you going to brush your teeth?"

"I don't have a toothbrush."

"Use mine."

"That's disgusting."

Adam stares at him. "You've had my _tongue_ in your mouth. How is a toothbrush disgusting after that?"

"It's got." Ronan waves a hand dismissively, to cover for the fact that he doesn't actually have an answer. This isn't something that he should have to explain to another human. "Plaque on it."

Adam steps into the bathroom and turns the sink on. He holds the toothbrush up where Ronan can see it, like a magician at the start of a trick: _look, a normal gross toothbrush, but when I wash it it becomes -- still a normal gross toothbrush!_

"What's disgusting is that I made out with a guy who hasn't brushed his teeth in two days," Adam complains.

"You've already done it. Might as well do it again."

"Absolutely not if you don't brush your teeth right now."

Ronan brushes his teeth.

He doesn't get to make out with Adam for very long. As soon as Adam's horizontal he sighs out a long breath and goes loose in Ronan's arms. That's maybe just as good, though, feeling him relax, hearing him drift off to sleep.

He drives Adam to class again in the morning, wearing one of his t-shirts and a pair of his boxers. He stops at the first drug store he finds with a parking lot, gloats to himself about winning the _sharing a toothbrush is gross_ argument, and then he realizes that he has no use for it because it's broad daylight and there's no reason on Earth for him not to drive back to DC.

He sits in his car in the CVS parking lot for a while. When he finally looks at his phone he sees a message from Adam: _I don't know if you've got plans, but my friend's band has a show tonight --_

He sends back _yeah sounds great_ without reading the rest of the message.

He wastes another day of his life in Boston traffic, and then they go listen to Adam's friend's band. Ronan preferred the traffic, except he hadn't had Adam at his elbow then, nursing one cheap beer the whole night and giving the shitty ass music all the attention it deserves (none). He tells Ronan about the Latin class he's taking this semester -- _The Aeneid, again, do you know how many times I've had to read the Aeneid_ \-- and Ronan tells him about the summer Gansey came back from a trip to England with a fake-ass accent -- _if I heard him say 'knackered' one more time I was going to chuck his poseur ass in the Atlantic and let him swim back -- don't you mean the Pond --_

They step outside in between sets. Ronan really does think that they just wanted fresh air, honestly, but then Adam grins too sharp at something he says and Ronan can't breathe, can't think, can only touch. They end up in the alley behind the bar, Ronan pinning Adam against the wall, Adam grinding against him and moaning until Ronan fixes their mouths together to keep the sound down.

He doesn't know exactly when the switch happens, but at some point Adam goes from desperate to, well, a less fun kind of desperate. He pushes away from the wall. From the neck down Adam is a perfect disheveled mess that makes Ronan proud of himself, but his face is much too serious. That's no good. Ronan leans in again to lick the tip of his nose.

Adam laughs once, "what the hell," and straightens his clothes enough that they can go back inside for the second set. It's nearly eleven by the time they get back to Adam's apartment. There's no discussion of Ronan leaving for DC.

On Wednesday morning Ronan gets a text from Declan. He scowls at his phone while Adam steps into the bathroom, is still scowling at his phone when Adam comes out.

"You know there's a little button on the side that turns the phone off, right?" Adam asks. "Much more effective than the evil eye."

Ronan flips him off. "My brother wants to have dinner."

"And you don't want to?"

"No. Yes. Fuck." He doesn't know how to describe things with Declan, especially not the newly fragile state they've been in since Matthew moved away and left it just the two of them most of the time, with nothing and everything standing in between them. "He's just going to bitch at me for not having a job," the truth but not the whole truth.

Adam says, deadpan, "it's like he doesn't even know you're rich."

Ronan bites his ear. Adam shoves him off. Ronan wrestles him down onto the bed until his _time to leave_ alarm goes off.

When they're in the car Adam says, "what do you think you'll do about your brother?"

"Shit, I don't know." What he does know is that if he leaves Adam and drives back to soul-crushing DC only to have Declan try to lecture him on top of that, he is going to do something he'll hate himself for later. "I can't deal with him right now."

"I guess it's too bad for him that you're in Boston."

Ronan looks over, surprised, but Adam's looking out the window. There's no telling how much he was offering with that.

"Right." Ronan carefully mimics Adam's offhand tone. "He should've asked if I had a prior engagement this evening."

Adam snorts. "Yeah, I was planning to make grilled cheese, you'd hate to break that reservation," but he would, he really would.

The grilled cheese is good. The sex after is better, running his hands over Adam's skin and feeling Adam dig his nails into his back. Ronan bites his chest and Adam hisses like that hurt; Ronan pulls away.

"No, that -- " Adam says, "yeah," which could really mean any damn thing. Ronan takes a guess and bites him again. Adam puts a hand on the back of his head like he's holding him in place.

Ronan bites down hard and sucks a bruise onto Adam's chest. When he finally does look up, Adam is smiling at him in this crooked way that's sort of hard to look at. Ronan buries his face in Adam's neck and focuses on jerking him off.

It isn't very long before Adam pushes him away. That crooked smile is gone. It doesn't make him any easier to look at.

Ronan leans forward but Adam turns his face before he can kiss him. He pulls back, at a loss.

Adam takes advantage of his hesitation to swing a leg over his thighs and straddle him.

"You don't have to," Ronan starts.

Adam cuts him off. " _Don't._ It doesn't help to make you getting off contingent on whether I get off. That's too much pressure."

He doesn't know if he's allowed say _actually, I'm just not into it when you're not happy_. He doesn't understand why there has to be pressure, why this can't be fun or else just _stop_. But apparently that's how it is, and if the best thing he can do for Adam is take some pressure off, then that's what he'll do. "What do you want right now?"

"I want to blow you."

"Okay. Do it," so Adam blows him. He likes having Adam's mouth on him, twining his fingers through Adam's hair, listening to the sounds Adam makes. He just doesn't like the way that Adam said it, like he's trying to prove something. Is he trying to prove he can get Ronan off? Ronan already knew that.

Thursday morning Ronan wakes up long before Adam's alarm and drives himself crazy trying to think. It doesn't do any good. By the time Adam wakes up, he still hasn't come up with an excuse to stay in Boston another day.

He decides he just -- won't bring it up, says goodbye to Adam like normal when he drops him off on campus. What if he just doesn't go? Is that an option? Fuck, it probably isn't.

He heads south out of the city, glowering at every other car on the road. Boston has made Ronan _not like driving_ , what the fuck. His car must hate it too, because for no goddamn reason he can tell the check engine light comes on. He swears at it for thirty seconds before he realizes "oh, fuck yeah."

Half an hour later he texts Adam, _I had to take my car to the fucking shop._ Which is true. He leaves out the part where he didn't argue when the guy said it wouldn't be ready until tomorrow, or that he hadn't asked how essential it was that the repairs get done _right now_ and not, say, a day and four hundred miles later.

_Oh no I'm so sorry to hear that_

Ronan is kind of surprised by Adam's response, but it makes more sense when the next message arrives: 

_I hope they don't have to put her down_  
_How are you handling the separation_  
_Do you need comfort in these trying times_

Ronan had typed out the beginning of a _fuck you_ text, but the last line makes him stop.

 _if you're offering, yeah_ , and when Adam comes back from class he lets Ronan back into his apartment and into his bed like Ronan had never left. They make out, hot and then sweet and then hot again. Ronan slows things down whenever he thinks Adam's getting stressed, or just because he wants to, until Adam is making needy sounds in his throat, rubbing up hard against him, and Ronan jerks him off in no time at all.

Adam lies on his back for a while after, not really doing anything besides staring at the ceiling, which is _gratifying as fuck_. He catches his breath soon enough, though, and rolls onto his side. "You tricked me into getting off!" It's a bit too dazed to be much of an accusation.

"I didn't. I would've been happy just making out, but." Ronan shrugs. "If I see an opportunity, I'm going to take it."

Adam's mouth twitches, like it's trying to smile without him noticing. "You sound like a life coach, what the hell. Is this supposed to be inspirational?"

"I mean, if you feel really inspired..."

Adam rolls his eyes -- completely unconvincing -- and jerks him off. It doesn't take very long, the way that Adam is beaming.

Adam's first alarm goes off Friday morning and he turns it off without getting out of bed. Ronan rubs at his eyes, not really processing anything. He hadn't slept well. This mattress is killing him, which he has zero intention of mentioning.

Adam says, "I don't have class tomorrow."

"Yeah, I'd hope not." Ronan drops his hand. Belatedly notices how Adam is looking at him, intense like he's thinking about something.

A second later the expression is gone. He's probably just out of it from sleeping badly too. He's been suffering the horrors of this mattress much longer than Ronan has.

"I'll actually have time to do something," he adds. "If you aren't busy."

Like Ronan has anything to do in this stupid town without Adam, like Ronan would turn down the opportunity to spend time with him that isn't squeezed in between homework and classes. If Ronan was busy he'd cancel.

"Maybe," Ronan says. "What'd you have in mind?"

It turns out that Adam knows a hundred things to do around Boston that don't cost any money, or, don't cost any money if you already have a subway pass. Ronan refuses to buy one; it takes all the fun out of public transportation if you're _allowed_ to be there. Adam says that's his right but also refuses to be anywhere near Ronan when he jumps the turnstile.

"Oh, but _hitchhiking_ you don't have a problem with."

"I won't get fined for hitchhiking."

"No, you'll get murdered," Ronan says. "Aren't you supposed to be smarter than that?"

"I don't make a habit out of it," Adam says, like that makes it okay. "But it's not like I could take the subway to Virginia. I had a friend who could drive me as far as New Jersey but after that I didn't have anyone that I could ask."

"You don't know anyone in Virginia?"

"I didn't have anyone that I could count on," Adam elaborates.

"Then why did you even go?"

Adam hesitates, then says "I had to visit my parents" in a voice that contains absolutely no emotion. It doesn't need emotion. The meaning is clear: his parents aren't people that he can count on.

"Fine," Ronan says, rather than arguing _then they're not worth getting murdered over_ since subject isn't up for discussion if Adam won't even admit it exists. "Next time call _me_ before you go baiting serial killers."

Adam gives him a strange look. Ronan realizes that he just said -- that Adam can count on him. That he wants Adam to count on him.

A train arrives. Adam pushes through the crowd of people leaving it to get on. For all Ronan knows this isn't even the train they were waiting for. Maybe Adam wants a distraction from Ronan's inappropriate devotion.

"I'm not planning on going back to Virginia," Adam says, short and dismissive. "But I'll keep that in mind," and Ronan feels a lurch at what that could mean, if it means anything.

It's a nice day out. Ronan doesn't get fined, although they end up walking more than taking the subway. He's exhausted by the time they get back to the apartment, falls asleep ten seconds after he gets in bed and wraps himself around Adam.

They don't actually talk about Sunday. They don't make any plans. Adam doesn't mention the fact that it's been a week, that Ronan has an entire day to drive back to DC before it gets dark, that he has things he need to do that Ronan is in the way of. He just asks if he'd rather have waffles or French toast and then makes breakfast shirtless like he _wants_ Ronan to drag him out of the kitchen and throw him down on the couch, so that's exactly what Ronan does.

Ronan doesn't mention the date either. If he doesn't ask _can I stay_ then he doesn't have to hear Adam say no.

Monday is rough. Ronan gives up on driving anywhere and tries to recreate the experience of walking around Boston instead. He immediately gets lost and it gets worse from there, and there's no point anyway because he doesn't have Adam with him.

Some of that frustrated energy lingers even after he picks Adam up and they get back to the apartment. Everything goes just a little bit wrong, even making out, which Ronan thought they'd pretty much mastered. Now it's all _wait -- no, just -- can you -- I need_ \--

Ronan hoists himself up off Adam, trying to find a position that will work. Adam squirms, trying to do the same thing at the same time, and knocks Ronan off balance. He falls off the couch and onto the coffee table.

The coffee table collapses.

So, great: now he's lying on the ground, with a broken coffee table jabbing into him, and Adam out of reach staring blankly at him.

" _What_ ," Ronan snarls, stinging in a way that has nothing to do with hitting his elbow on the ground.

"Hang on," Adam says. "I'm deciding how I feel."

"That's not something you _decide_."

"Oh, sure it is. It's a matter of priorities. You broke my coffee table," Adam says, suddenly annoyed. "But you broke my coffee table with your _ass_ ," and a smile creeps over his face.

Ronan stares at him, outraged, but that just pushes Adam all the way to laughter.

Ronan think, _priorities_. Adam laughing is more important than just about anything else he can name. He laughs too, crawls over to Adam and puts his head on his knee.

"I'll buy you a new one," Ronan says.

"Don't spend money on my apartment."

That hurts, as much as anything can hurt when Adam is running a finger lightly around his ear. Of course he'd say that. Adam is so fucking transactional. Ronan needs to get on his level.

"I'm the one who broke it, don't I have to replace it?"

Adam sounds like he's about to laugh again. "I was the one making out with you. I'd say _we_ broke it."

"I can pay half."

"I bought it at a yard sale for twenty dollars, it's really not that big of a deal," and while Ronan debates whether he can get away with offering Adam ten dollars, Adam slides down off of the couch and sits next to him on the carpet. This time they fit together so easily that it makes his heart clench.

While Adam is in class on Tuesday, Ronan goes hunting for a coffee table. He figures if it's less than twenty dollars Adam can't get mad at him. It's a good plan, except he has no idea where to start looking and he keeps getting off the subway in neighborhoods that don't really do _twenty dollar furniture_.

Eventually he passes by a couple guys loading up a moving van. There's a pile of junk on the sidewalk next to the trash pick up. Standing on its side is a two-legged coffee table with the other two legs sticking out of a lampshade next to it.

"You guys throwing this out?" Ronan asks.

They shrug with Bostonian indifference. "Hey, you wahnt it, it's yahs," so now Ronan's got half a table and half an idea.

Adam's studying late with a friend that afternoon. When he gets back to the apartment Ronan is waiting on the sidewalk, sitting on top of his table -- he's not bringing this into Adam's apartment until he's sure that it can handle his weight. He's not getting dumped on his ass _twice_.

"I asked you _not_ to."

"It was free."

"Really," Adam says, gloriously, beautifully suspicious.

"It was busted, I had to fix it up." He hopes Adam doesn't ask how he did that; the money he spent at the hardware store would probably count against him.

"I already had a busted coffee table. You could have fixed the one you broke if you needed to play handyman."

Ronan stares at Adam. That...had not occurred to him.

The exasperation melts away from Adam while Ronan struggles with how the fuck he could have missed that. He's doing a shit job at holding back a smile when he asks "how far did you have to carry this?"

"Not that far," Ronan mutters. "I mostly took the subway."

"You brought a coffee table on the subway." Adam laughs. Ronan scowls, because that's bullshit, seriously, but also because if he's scowling he can't say anything like _I want to keep making you this happy_. "You snuck onto the subway with a coffee table, Jesus. You might as well bring it up."

"Fuck that, you get it. My back is killing me."

Adam hoists the table up and heads for the stairs without too much difficulty. He throws out over his shoulder, "I'll make it up to you."

Ronan freezes in place and then charges up the stairs to catch up.

Adam does make it up to him, turns him into a blissed out mess and then lies next to him until he falls asleep. When he wakes up later the first thing he sees is Adam, doing homework on the couch with his feet up on Ronan's table.

The broken table gets pushed to the wall, where it mocks Ronan by looking almost intact. He spends a good chunk of Wednesday afternoon debating if he wants to burn it or try to repair it. Adam doesn't actually need two coffee tables, but maybe he could turn it into something else. It doesn't deserve to maintain its identity. He could make it something disgraceful, like a shoe rack.

Adam owns three pairs of shoes. He wouldn't actually appreciate Ronan cluttering up his apartment with something he doesn't need. Which would make it pretty hilarious, but on the other hand, Ronan has other, easier ways of annoying Adam. And he'd kind of like to be helpful for once.

Ronan frowns. He doesn't know how to be helpful. Maybe he should stick to being annoying.

"What do you even need all these books for?" he complains, after taking half the books off Adam's bookshelf to get at the one he wants.

"Reading," Adam says, "that's usually what one does with books."

"You're really gonna read an intro to philosophy textbook."

"Read it, sell it to a desperate freshman, hollow it out and smuggle a flask of liquor around in it..." Adam shrugs. His eyes don't move from his laptop, but his posture changes, like his shoulders didn't lower all the way back down. It puts Ronan on alert despite the casual way he adds, "I didn't have much growing up. It makes you want to hold onto things once you do get them."

Ronan immediately feels like an asshole. Which isn't a new feeling, but that doesn't mean he likes it. He tries to offer something back without acknowledging that Adam had offered anything in the first place. "Yeah, well, my brothers would say I'm being a hypocrite. They think I'm a hoarder."

"What do you hoard? Please don't say something alive."

"Fuck you, I'm not a fucking cat lady," Ronan says. "And I'm not a hoarder. I just -- I'm the one who holds onto all our old family shit. I know a lot of it is garbage, but. I'm not good at letting go."

Adam tilts his head up, just happening to look up from his laptop at this exact moment, but Ronan has the thought that Adam doesn't _just happen_ to do things.

It's a lot harder to be open when Adam is _looking_ at him. He adds, hastily, "and they're the ones with a problem, they had the neatest fucking bedrooms of any kids that ever lived. It was creepy."

"Yeah, no, after three years of roommates I'm not going call _neatness_ a fault, however unnatural it seems. 'Neat and unnatural' sounds great. Ghosts would make perfect roommates."

"Until they start throwing shit around."

"You're thinking of poltergeists."

Ronan scowls and drops the textbook to the carpet with a dull _thud_. "You gotta contradict me on this? You're so smart you need to be right about how _ghosts_ work?"

"If you can't cite an authoritative source I don't have to believe you."

"I'm Catholic."

"That's more of a trauma than an authority."

"We _invented_ exorcisms, asshole." A thought occurs to him. "Why don't you have a roommate?"

"If I had a roommate you wouldn't get to seduce me on the couch in the middle of the day," Adam says. "Or do you think you want to get walked in on? It's even less fun than it sounds."

Ronan was thinking that if Adam had some help on the rent maybe he wouldn't be mostly broke most of the time; now he's thinking who the fuck Adam got walked in on with. Neither of those is a safe topic to comment on. He settles for, "I thought college students had to have roommates. Are they even going to give you your diploma if you haven't suffered through living with another person?"

"I've suffered," Adam says, dry. "I hated my roommate freshmen year. And sophomore year. And all three of the guys I shared an apartment with last year, I'm not going to keep banging my head on that brick wall."

Ronan frowns. That doesn't make sense: Gansey likes Adam. If Adam has such a hard time finding a good roommate, there's no way he wouldn't have volunteered. "Did you ever live with Gansey?"

Adam snorts. "No, thank God."

Ronan feels the need to come to Gansey's defense. At least he's out of the country and will never know about it. "Hey, he's a pretty good roommate."

"I believe you. But all of my roommate relationships have been terrible, and they all have one common element."

"What?"

Adam gives him a look: _figure it out_.

"Your roommates all sucked and they blamed it on you?"

He shrugs. "I get it, no one wants to live with a control freak. Also apparently I'm 'judgy' and don't know how to have fun, but I think that's more of a matter of personal taste."

That doesn't sound like his Adam at all. Adam is so much fun that Ronan would rather wander the streets of Boston alone for hours than give up the chance to see more of him. Adam -- okay, Adam is judgy, but half the time that's even more fun, and the rest of the time Ronan can just throw it back at him that he has terrible opinions too, like _I get to be the ghost expert for no damn reason_. And if he's anal about where things go in the apartment, it's not like Ronan really cares either way.

Besides. It's Adam's apartment.

Ronan doesn't say any of this, because he's not Adam's roommate, and pointing out that he's had no problem living with him for the last week and a half would just open the door for Adam to realize _wait, why am I still cohabitating with this insomniac asshole slob_?

"At least you know how to get rid of Gansey if you ever need to," he says instead.

"Sure, I'd just have to move in with him. There's got to be an easier way to scare him off."

"Are you kidding? He has the opposite of commitment issues, he's fucking impossible to scare off," and Adam laughs.

Ronan has to bite his tongue again on Thursday when they go grocery shopping and Adam refuses to let Ronan chip in.

"They're my groceries," Adam says, like that settles it, like none of that food is going to get eaten by Ronan. Which -- who the fuck knows. Maybe it won't be. Maybe he'll get asked to go home before it comes up.

He points out, "I killed your Cheerios."

Adam rolls his eyes and hands him a box of cereal. "Fine, you can buy that."

Ronan reaches into the basket and grabs the lube that Adam tucked between a bottle of shampoo and a box of pasta. Adam smirks at him and doesn't argue. Maybe because he realized, before Ronan did, that this meant Ronan was going to go through the checkout looking like some kind of Cheerio-fucking pervert.

As soon as they get back to the apartment he chucks the lube at Adam. "Take your stupid groceries. That cashier's going to report me as a sex offender now."

Adam laughs, throwing his head back and falling to a seat on the couch. It is very hard for Ronan to keep scowling when he's lit up so bright, but he manages.

"God," Adam says, finally, "I can't believe you're Gansey's friend."

That throws him. It's not so hard to scowl now. "What, because I'm such a shitshow?"

"Hm, debatable." Ronan starts to do just that, debate, but Adam brushes a thumb over the corner of his mouth. Not even like he's trying to shut him up, just touching him, but it has that effect anyway. "That's not what I meant. It's just -- you came out of nowhere, but you've been right there the whole time."

Ronan's heart pounds so hard that it hurts. That sounds like the thought he has sometimes when he catches sight of Adam: _how is this possible, how are you real, how did I find you when I wasn't even looking_.

But he doesn't understand how Adam can say that when an hour earlier he'd refused to even share groceries with Ronan. So it means something else when Adam says it, and Ronan doesn't want to ask what that is.

He kisses Adam instead. Keeps it to just kissing even after Adam crawls into his lap. He doesn't want to risk ruining this moment by stressing him out, and he loves this, his arms around Adam and Adam's hands on his back, only separating from each other to breathe, desire burning low and constant in his gut.

Adam finally leans back and looks at him, eyes bright and kind of dazed. He doesn't say anything, waiting for Ronan to say something, or just unable to think of anything. Ronan feels pretty fucking smug about wrecking him so thoroughly.

Adam breathes in and out like he has to remember how to do that. "I have an essay to write."

Ronan runs his knuckles down Adam's cheek, watching as he shuts his eyes and doesn't reopen them.

"You should do that. I can make dinner."

Adam's voice is heavy with skepticism. "You can?"

"Yes I can, fuck you," and when Adam has pulled himself together enough to get his laptop Ronan searches on his phone for HOW TO MAKE FOOD.

He's trying to make dinner again on Friday when Adam discovers that the door is unlocked. The first time Ronan forgot to lock the door behind him, Adam had just asked him to do it and let it go. Apparently he doesn't get a pass on the, uh, fifth or sixth time that it happens.

"How can you be paranoid I'm going to get picked up by a _serial killer_ while I'm hitchhiking but you don't see any reason to _lock the front door_."

"We never locked the doors when I was a kid," Ronan says. "We didn't need to, we were out in the country."

"Oh, so there wouldn't have been anyone around to _notice_ a break in. Yeah, real safe."

Ronan doubles down, because Adam is waiting for him to double down so that he can keep arguing. Ronan recognizes that exact expression by now. "Nothing's going to hurt me in my own home."

Something -- happens. Ronan doesn't know what it is. He just knows Adam doesn't look like he wants to argue anymore; his expression changes into something that Ronan doesn't recognize. He looks _surprised_ , somehow, like he just spotted Ronan for the first time, like Ronan snuck in through the unlocked door while he wasn't looking.

 _Don't ask me how I got in,_ Ronan thinks, nonsensically. They both know how he got here: Adam let him in. The question is how much longer Ronan is going to drag out that invitation, and Adam's the only one who can answer that. Ronan can't say _let me stay_ when he's already trespassing. But if Adam _asked_ him to...

Except Adam isn't going to ask him to stay, to, what, _live with him_ \-- it's insane that Ronan is thinking of it and that's Ronan, who's impulsive and reckless and crazy. It's too much too fast, and he doesn't even need it, really. It's enough that Adam likes Ronan, that he wants him around, that he opened the door the first time. That's _enough_ , and he can fucking pay the cost for it, can deal with this limbo where he doesn't leave and he doesn't ask to stay and he doesn't think about how long it'll be before something goes wrong.

That something turns out to be Gansey.

Ronan's lying on the couch when the phone rings. Adam is taking a break from studying to lie on the couch too, mostly on top of Ronan. It's exactly as close as Ronan always wants him to be, and it's close enough he can hear Gansey's half of the conversation.

"I need a book from the library in my parents' house," because Gansey only ever has boring emergencies. "Can you send it to me?"

"Why can't your parents do it?" Ronan asks.

"You know that Congress isn't in session."

"You know I didn't know that."

Adam grins up at him from his chest. Gansey ignores him but sounds annoyed, so really Ronan is getting everything he wants today. "They're in Virginia at the moment, living among the constituents."

Adam makes a _world's smallest violin_ gesture. Ronan snorts.

"Doesn't your mom have servants who do her work for her?"

"I'm not going to ask my mother to send one of her assistants on a road trip just so I can have a book, particularly not when you're right there."

"I'm not right there."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm in Boston."

Gansey pauses, like he doesn't recognize the name of the city he's lived in for three years. "Whatever are you doing in Boston?"

"You don't remember making me drive all the way up here? Rude."

"Lynch, that was days ago. Why are you still there?"

Ronan was so focused on the game, _cockblock Gansey from his book for as long as possible_ , that he hadn't thought about where the conversation was heading. Maybe that's for the best. He would have just been panicking about it. This way he gets all of that panic at once, _and_ he doesn't have a plan.

He's still looking at Adam. Adam is looking back up at him, face unreadable. Gansey is waiting.

Ronan manages to say "uh -- " and nothing else.

Adam takes the phone out of his hand. "Gansey, he's going to have to call you back when he decides why he's been living in my apartment for the last two weeks." He hangs up and drops the phone on Ronan's chest, in the space he abandons to stand up and walk away from the couch.

Ronan stands up too, not willing to be at the disadvantage.

Adam smiles at him. It is not a good smile.

"Okay," Ronan says. "You're upset."

"So you can tell what's going on in my head but not in yours." He tries to object but Adam doesn't give him a chance. "Why are you still here, Ronan?"

Fuck, there it is again, the question he's been dodging because he doesn't have an answer. Not a good enough one, not yet. He could've come up with _something_ if he'd had more time, except he's already had more time than he ever could have expected. It's just not fair. "If you wanted me to leave you could've just told me."

"I'm not asking you to leave. I'm asking you why you haven't."

"Just -- give me a second, shit. Gansey caught me off-guard. It's not like I could tell him that we're dating."

Adam flinches.

Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ today. That's one of the words Ronan's been avoiding even in his own head, _dating_ and _relationship_ and _boyfriend_ , because all of them lead back to that conversation he can't start about the things he wants and doesn't have a right to ask for.

Except he's having that conversation anyway and it isn't going how he thought it would. Adam doesn't ask him for space, doesn't point out how short a time they've really known each other, doesn't tell him _you want too much_. He just looks away like if he does it fast enough Ronan won't see the hurt on his face.

Ronan takes a step forward. Adam takes a step back.

Ronan freezes in place. Takes a second to _think_ , because Adam was wrong before: he has no fucking clue what's going on in Adam's head, except that he's screwed something up in translation.

"I can't _announce_ that to Gansey when we've never talked about it," he says.

"But why can't we talk about it?" Adam asks. "I've been tiptoeing around this for days, wondering when you were going to leave. But you _kept staying_ and I couldn't even be happy about that because I didn't know what it meant."

"It didn't mean anything," and Ronan wants to snatch the words back as soon as he says them, wants to not have slapped that expression across Adam's face. "Shit, that's not what I meant. I wanted to be here so I stayed here, that's it, there wasn't any hidden meaning. I wanted to be with you, and I thought if I said something then I wouldn't get to, okay?"

"No, that's not okay. You need to tell me things. I have to know what's going on."

"Look, this is what _happens_ when I try to talk about shit. I fuck it all up. Can you just -- tell me what you want to be going on?"

"You don't get it, Ronan. I _can't do that_."

"Why not?" he demands. "Why does it have to be me?"

"Because you got in a car to do a favor for a friend of a friend and two weeks later you still haven't gotten to go back home," Adam says. "I get to go to class and see my friends and sleep in my own bed every day and you don't even have a change of clothes. Every second you're here you're giving something up. And if that's what you want to do then that's, that's fine, but I can't _demand_ that from you. Not -- " He falls silent. Adds, bluntly, "I wouldn't go to DC for you. So I can't ask you to do this for me."

"That's not the same thing," Ronan points out helplessly. It doesn't get through. Adam just shakes his head. He isn't going to listen if Ronan says _your classes are more important than anything I'm missing to be here, I'm not asking you to come to DC for me, I don't need you to give up something just so we can be even_. But what did Ronan expect? That's all too logical to ever work.

"Adam, please let me touch you."

Adam is wound _so tight_ , but he nods anyway. This time when Ronan steps forward he doesn't move away. His hands come up to rest low on Ronan's back. Ronan tries not to cling as desperately as he feels.

"I didn't think that I could just _ask_ to stay here," he says. "That I could just keep invading your life and eating your food and getting in the way when you're trying to do homework. I figured if I brought it up you'd realize you needed your space back. I just wanted to put that off."

"You thought I didn't notice that you were still in my _studio apartment_?"

Ronan shrugs. "You're a busy guy. Maybe you lost track of time."

"How polite do you think I am? If I didn't want you here I would kick you out."

"It's just hard to believe you want me here."

Softly, Adam says, "I do, though."

Ronan draws in a shaky breath. "Can I stay tonight?"

"Yes."

"Can I tell people you're my boyfriend?"

"Yes."

"Can I kiss you?"

"Yes," and he keeps asking Adam _can I, can I hold your hand, can I take your shirt off, can I have a key to your apartment_ , asks for anything and everything he can think of, to hear Adam say yes to all of it.

The next day he drives Adam to campus and calls Gansey on the way back, lets the traffic distract him from what he's doing. "Adam and I are dating."

"I had assumed as much," Gansey says. "That's -- great."

"Wow, that sounded really fucking genuine. Am I not good enough for him or something?"

"You deserve the very best, it's only that I'm still processing this." Because of course Gansey spent the entire last day analyzing his friends' relationship status. "And I'm hindered somewhat by the tenor of events."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Neither of you sounded particularly happy yesterday."

Ronan exhales with a huff, hopes that the phone blared a bunch of static right into Gansey's ear. "We had some shit to figure out."

Gansey _hm_ s with curiosity that is pretending to be intellectual. "Is that why you didn't tell me?"

"No, that was payback."

Gansey sighs. "And what have I allegedly done this time?"

"You never told me you knew anyone cool."

"That is demonstrably false."

"Not like this," because nothing anyone could have said could have prepared Ronan for Adam.

"Oh," Gansey says. "There it is."

"What?" Ronan asks, suspicious.

"I heard it that time." He can practically see Gansey's smile, the delicate one that can't be forced, that just grows from the inside out and keeps spreading outward to anyone who can see it.

"Ugh, you're such a loser. Shouldn't you be off desecrating graves somewhere instead of making me throw up?"

"Your happiness is more important than archaeological excavation."

"Wow, that must have hurt to say. Are all your old dead boyfriends going to break up with you now?"

"You're the only one on this phone call with a boyfriend," Gansey reminds him, because that's the kind of weirdo he is: he likes to brag about _other people's_ relationships. "Which was awfully fast work, by the way. You left DC as strangers and arrived in Boston in a relationship?"

 _Yeah, but it took me two weeks to figure that out_. "Hey, if you've ever spent a day with Adam without thinking _I gotta lock that shit down_ then you're the one with a problem, not me."

"Well, then, congratulations on 'locking that down.'" Gansey sounds five hundred years old.

Ronan finishes out the phone call and feels, disgustingly, happier. His good mood gets him through the hours until he can go pick Adam up again.

"You know that I can get myself to campus and back, right?" Adam asks once he's in the car. "You don't have to keep doing this just because we established a precedent."

Ronan says the thing that he hasn't been saying for two weeks: "I like getting more time with you."

Adam blushes. "Oh. Thanks, though. I still appreciate it."

"Shut up with the thanks," Ronan says. "You really thought I was doing it because of _precedent_?"

He grins, somehow embarrassed and pleased at the same time. "I _hoped_ you were doing it because you wanted to, but maybe you just thought that I would think you owed it to me because I was letting you stay at my place."

"You'll really tie your brain in knots figuring out a way that people might not like you, huh."

Adam looks down at his hands, twisted together in his lap. "I wanted to believe you were also finding excuses to spend time together, but I didn't _know_."

They stop at a red light. Ronan lets go of the gear shift and takes Adam's hand. Then he frowns.

"Wait, were _you_ making excuses?"

Adam traces a circle on the back of Ronan's hand. Keeps his eyes on it like that takes all of his attention. "I might have...exaggerated when I said my friend's band had a show."

Ronan snorts. "Yeah, calling that shit a band was a stretch."

Adam smiles wider and definitely more embarrassed.

"Did you just drag me to some random person's gig?" Ronan demands.

"He may have been more of a 'guy I have a class with' than a friend."

"What the _hell_ ," Ronan says. "I had that shitty chorus stuck in my head for two days."

Adam shakes his head, unrepentant. "It was easier to ask you to stay so we could do something than to ask you to stay just because I wanted you to."

"You're fucking ridiculous." Ronan needs his hand back, but he squeezes Adam's fingers once before he pulls away.

" _We're_ fucking ridiculous. Was your car even in the shop?"

"Yes," Ronan says, sullen in his own righteousness. "It needed a new spark plug."

Adam chokes on his breathing with a strange sputtering noise. "A new spark -- Ronan, I could have done that for you in the parking lot. It would have taken an hour, tops," and he laughs at Ronan all the rest of the way to the apartment.

Another week passes like the last two: Ronan spends time with Adam when he can and wanders Boston looking for distraction when he can't. He isn't any better at ending up in the part of town he means to be in, but at least while he's drifting around has something to do, to the extent that 'looking for a bookshelf someone is throwing away' counts as something to do. He checks in with Adam every morning, _can I stay tonight_. It isn't as hard as he thought to ask, now that he isn't stressed about everything falling apart.

But maybe the stress was doing something, because now that it's gone little thoughts keep sneaking in to remind him that he lives in a different city, like now that he's not worried about Adam pointing it out his brain has decided to do it for him.

He gets dressed one morning and realizes that he hates the way Adam's shirts fit on him. He walks three blocks before he remembers the restaurant he's thinking of is four blocks away from his apartment, not Adam's. He offers to loan Adam a half-decent translation of the Aeneid if it'll make him stop bitching about _why do I have to read the same book for the fourth time, this is supposed to be an upper level course,_ except he doesn't have the book to give him because it's in DC.

There's a night that he kind of hates himself for it, but he tells Adam, "I think I'm going to drive back to DC tomorrow."

Adam blinks, but that's just about all the reaction he gives. "Okay. You should do that, I'm sure there's a lot of things you miss."

 _Things_ is a good way of putting it. He misses the shit in his apartment -- his clothes, his old family photographs, his mattress that isn't trying to slowly torture him to death -- except that's not really it either. All that shit forms together in his head into a place that is actually his, that's actually home. He hasn't had a home for three weeks.

"I'm just feeling -- not settled."

"You don't have to explain. I like having you here, but I never wanted to keep you longer than you wanted to stay."

"Yeah, you've said that," Ronan says. "I wanted to be here. I just. I'm not settled," he finishes, knowing that's not really what he means but not finding any better words. "I think that's why I figured that it had to bother you having me hang around like dead weight. Because it bothered me."

"Oh." Adam smiles, something sharp and joyless, even thought his voice is light. "I just figured you thought it bugged me because I'm a control freak."

Ronan frowns at him. "Do you want me to call you that? Is this like a fetish thing?"

That startles a laugh out of Adam. "What kind of fetish is that?"

"I don't know, you're the one who keeps saying you're a control freak. Am I supposed to agree with you?"

"No," Adam says. "I don't want you to agree with that."

"Good, because if you _want_ someone to disagree with you, I'm gonna do that all of the time anyway."

Adam laughs again, only halfway, so Ronan's not surprised when he says, softer, "you're going to leave in the morning?"

"Yeah. I don't want to scare you by driving at night."

He doesn't respond to the teasing. "Promise me something?"

"Okay."

"If you want to visit, just -- tell me that. Don't make me wonder."

"All right," Ronan says. "But if you don't want me to visit, you'll let me know."

"Promise." Adam says it too easily.

"And if you want me to visit, you'll let me know."

Adam smiles in a crooked way that means he absolutely doesn't promise that. How the hell can he think he's a control freak when he's putting this whole thing in Ronan's hands? It's not like Ronan has any idea what the hell he's doing.

But somehow, even without knowing what he's doing, even with putting them through a bunch of bullshit stress they didn't need, he's still gotten to a place where he can leave and know that he'll be allowed to come back. So he follows his instincts, kisses Adam like it's a promise from both of them.

There's something wild and urgent in the way that Adam kisses him back. Ronan leans into that instead of trying to fix it. He feels wild too. 

Things escalate fast, Adam fumbling Ronan's fly open, Ronan leaving long scratches down his back, under his shirt because he can't be bothered to let Adam go for long enough to take it off. They fall gracelessly into bed and Adam gets on top of him, tugs the neckline of his shirt down to bite at his chest.

Each scrape of teeth shoots off sparks in his brain, except everything is already lit up bright from Adam riding his thigh.

"Fuck," Ronan chants, "fuck, fuck, fuck me, fuck, fuck me."

Adam exhales hot against his neck before blinking his eyes open. "Yeah? Do you want that?"

Why wouldn't he? He's liked it when Adam fingered him. He's liked everything Adam's done to him. Right this fucking second he thinks Adam could recite the periodic table of elements and he'd be into that. He doesn't have any room for nerves or doubt or anything that isn't lust, and if Adam isn't already at that point too then this has to get him there.

"Was that ambiguous?" He rolls onto his stomach. "Fuck. Me."

" _Jesus Christ,_ Ronan, you -- Jesus," so he got his point across.

He knows that it was a good idea as soon as Adam starts to slide into him. Adam inhales sharply and then goes still and silent, like he doesn't trust himself to react, but he can't hold back for long. He pushes in more and groans, soft but heartfelt.

Adam is moving inside him so slowly, and it's already good, it is, but Ronan wants it to be _incredible_. He rocks back to take him in further. Adam groans again, louder, and then he gives up and slides all the way in.

Ronan stops worrying about whether this will be good for Adam, because it's so fucking obvious that it already is, and then he really just stops having any kind of conscious thought at all. He just moves -- pushes back to meet Adam's thrusts -- arches under the touch of Adam's fingers running across his back -- swears when Adam's hand wraps around his cock, doesn't stop swearing until after he's spilled out across Adam's palm and onto the sheets.

He feels shocked stupid in the best way possible, like all of the annoying and unimportant things in his head got fucked out of him. His body keeps moving with Adam, coasting on that simple euphoria. He isn't expecting it, isn't expecting _anything_ , when Adam stops inside of him.

It takes him a few tries to string any words together. It doesn't help that Adam has bent over him to rest his forehead against the back of his neck.

"Do you need to stop?"

Adam sighs. It tickles the skin on Ronan's shoulder. "Yes."

They clean up and arrange themselves back on the bed. Ronan doesn't have to ask for Adam to make out with him after sex anymore; he just does it, although Ronan worries that Adam sees it as some kind of consolation prize for not getting off, or thinks that Ronan sees it that way. He puts a hand on the back of Adam's neck, squeezing gently, trying to convey how much he likes this, how much he wants Adam to like this.

They lie in bed for long enough that Ronan's body is thinking about letting him fall asleep, and then Adam says, "it isn't you."

"Hmm?"

"I don't want you to think that when I can't finish, it's because I'm not attracted to you."

Ronan's sleepy brain pokes at that a few times, but it refuses to make sense. He lifts his head up and squints at Adam. "You jumped me eight hours after you met me, I'm not worried that you don't think I'm _hot_."

"I just don't want to disappoint you. I know that it isn't really fun when I can't get off."

"I still have fun when you don't get off. I have fun when I don't get off. You know that's not the point, right?"

Adam's face is burning. "I didn't know that." He sounds relieved but somehow also stubborn.

"Maybe that's what I should have told Gansey," Ronan muses. "'Why are you still in Boston?' 'Well, Adam's fucking amazing in bed, but mostly it's because he yells at me about leaving the door unlocked.'"

"Oh, God," Adam laughs. "Gansey would have had a _heart attack_."

Ronan drinks in that laugh. Thinks about letting it go, leaving Adam smiling and distracted and in the exact same place that he started.

He says, "it bugs me that it bugs you. I don't like when you're miserable in the middle of sex."

"I know," Adam says, soft. "But that's part of it, too. Once I think about it, _is it going to happen this time, am I too upset, am I screwing this up_ , I get anxious about it. And the anxiety makes it harder to get off, so I get more anxious. Knowing that it upsets you is just another reason to worry about it."

"But that's not how it started, right?"

Adam goes still like Ronan has just managed to startle him. "What do you mean?"

" _Now_ you get all fucked up about whether it'll happen or not, because you already know it's a problem. The first time you had sex -- " a sudden flare of anger; Ronan pushes it ruthlessly away. He can be jealous _later_. " -- you weren't thinking 'oh I bet I won't get off,' were you? You wouldn't have expected it until after it had already happened, so that's not why it happened."

Adam doesn't answer. At first Ronan figures that it's taking him a while to follow that train wreck of a thought. Then he figures Adam isn't going to answer, that there isn't really an answer to give.

Adam is silent for a very long time before he says "I didn't want to get off."

Ronan is thrown: by what Adam said, by the fact he'd said anything, by the harsh and unfamiliar voice he'd said it in. "Why not?"

"I didn't want to be seen like that."

Okay, orgasms look pretty ridiculous, but he wouldn't have thought that would _stop_ anyone from having one. Who even thinks about shit like that when they're about to come? Besides, he loves how Adam looks when he gets off, not that he's going to say that and put any more fucking pressure on him. "Like what, happy?"

"Helpless."

Ronan knows that voice: that's _I'm ten seconds away from bolting_ , that's _I can't tell you what I need_. That's _I will never admit it but I'm freaking the fuck out_.

He pushes himself up on one elbow to face him.

Adam shuts his eyes.

Ronan abandons whatever the hell he thought he was going to say about that, kisses his forehead and says "next time, tell me when you start worrying about it, before you can worry about worrying about it."

Adam nods with his eyes still shut. Ronan rests his head on his chest so that Adam will know that Ronan can't see him.

It's evening by the time that Ronan gets home to DC. Six hours after he skipped town, give or take twenty-two days. He's ready for his apartment to smell bad, since he can't remember the last time he took the garbage out, but it doesn't. It's just a little stuffy and a little dark and it's empty and it sucks.

He keeps looking around for -- it, whatever it was, the thing about this place that made him so sure he had to come back now. He doesn't see it anywhere. Was this really what he ditched Adam for?

He takes a shower where the water pressure isn't total crap and puts on clothes that fit right and brushes his teeth with his own toothbrush, and when he steps back out of the bedroom Declan is sitting at his kitchen table.

"How did you get in?" he demands as rudely as possible.

"The door was unlocked."

Ronan wants to tell Adam, _it's worse than you thought, not burglars or serial killers, older brothers_ , except he can't tell Adam that because Adam is four hundred miles away.

"How did you even find out I was back?"

"I saw your car in the parking lot." Declan has a beer -- one of Ronan's beers -- open on the table in front of him. Declan doesn't even drink canned beer. "I've been swinging by to check on the place while you were shacking up with your new boyfriend."

Ronan had told Declan he was out of town, and he'd responded to his occasional texts just to prove that he wasn't dead, but he hadn't said _why_ he'd been in Boston. "Are you _spying_ on me?"

Declan rolls his eyes and takes a sip of his stolen drink. "As flattering as that assumption is, it's not hard to guess. You disappeared for three weeks and came back with a hickey on your neck."

Ronan brings a hand up, wanting to touch the mark that Adam left on him, and then he realizes how that must look -- defensive, like he's trying to hide it. "Sorry," he snaps, "was I supposed to stay single and pathetic just because you are?"

"Have you thought this through?"

"You know I never think anything through. Why bother asking?"

"What's your plan here?" Declan asks, undeterred. "You move to a new city for a guy you just met, and then what?"

Ronan thinks, _I'm not moving for him._ He hates that _that's_ the thing Declan is wrong about, so he decides abruptly that it isn't.

Now he understands why he needed to come back to DC. He needs to get rid of this home so he can have a new home somewhere else.

He stomps off to his bedroom and strips the blankets and sheets off his bed. Declan follows, nagging him.

"What are you even going to _do_ in Boston?"

"Get laid. Give me a hand with this or get out."

"Seriously, Ronan, think about this for ten seconds."

"I am," Ronan says, just to be a shit. "His mattress sucks."

"Think about it for ten seconds and _take some measurements_ before we drag this downstairs and find out it doesn't fit in your car."

"It's a mattress, stupid, it'll squish."

Declan scowls, but he rolls up his sleeves and grabs the foot of the mattress. It does fit in the car, although not without a lot of shoving.

"Now what, Ronan?"

"Now I _leave_. What the fuck else do you want from me?" Ronan's voice cracks, embarrassing at first, but that just feeds back into anger. "I don't have a _job_ , you've reminded of that ten thousand fucking times. I don't have a life here. I don't even have Matthew here anymore, so what's the point of staying in this stupid city?"

"I _know_ you're miserable here. But if you move to Boston just to be with some guy, all that's going to happen is you'll be miserable in Boston."

He says, bitterly, "You think I'm such a fuck up I can't be happy no matter what I do."

"If I thought you were incapable of happiness I would have saved myself a lot of fucking time and effort over the last twenty years," Declan snaps. "But you're not going to be happy if your whole life is about someone else. It didn't make you happy when it was your brothers and it didn't make you happy when it was Gansey and it won't make you happy now just because it's your boyfriend."

A thought flashes across Ronan's mind, all of those long hours while Adam is in class, doing homework, studying. He's already at a loss on how to fill that time and it's only been three weeks.

Declan's still talking, sounding far off and defeated. "You're obviously going, just -- get a hobby or something."

Ronan feels a bit numb when he says, "I think I'm gonna learn how to cook."

"Well, now I know two things about your boyfriend," Declan says. "He eats food and his mattress sucks."

"His name is Adam," Ronan says quietly. "He's friends with Gansey. He goes to Harvard."

Declan looks surprised by that, and weirdly touched. Ronan wants to believe that he's just such a snob that he's glad Ronan landed a Harvard man. He can't quite make himself buy it.

He goes back upstairs, shoves a bunch of clothes and all the things he really likes from the apartment into a couple of bags. He leaves the key with Declan, who does _not_ look surprised at having the rest of the work of moving Ronan out dumped on his shoulders.

"You're going to get dinged for breaking your lease," Declan badgers him, but in a half-assed kind of way, like it doesn't bother him Ronan is going to answer _yeah, I'm really going to lose sleep over that._

He doesn't actually sleep that night. He feels a little guilty thinking how Adam would worry if he knew he was driving so late, but he's fucking _wired_. There's no chance in hell he'd fall asleep even if he was comfortable in bed and not sitting at the wheel with the driver's seat fully upright because that was the only way to make his shit fit in the car. He can't stand the thought of pulling over somewhere to wait for morning, not while he's still a little fucking hermit crab carrying all his shit around on his back because he doesn't have a home.

He hits Boston in that weird late-night-early-morning time when the world doesn't really exist. Lets himself into the apartment with the key Adam made for him and silently locks the door.

Adam is curled up on his side. The bed looks so empty with just him in it. Ronan longs to crawl in beside him and fill up that space, but Adam has his godawful lab tomorrow morning and he never gets enough sleep anyway; Ronan isn't going to risk waking him up.

He sits on the couch, shuts his eyes and leans his head back. Now that he's _here_ he's a little less manic. He relaxes, dozing on and off, until he hears the alarm go off, hears Adam turn it off with a grouchy sigh.

He says, "Hey."

Adam's eyes snap open. He sits bolt upright. "Ronan?"

"Yeah."

"I thought you went home."

 _I did_. "I came back." Adam is still staring at him like if he blinks Ronan will disappear. "I lied to you."

"Really." Adam is carefully neutral.

"I promised that I'd tell you what I want," Ronan says. "But I didn't, because I want to move in with you, and moving in together after three weeks would be a stupid reckless thing to do."

"It would be." There's no reaction on his face or in his voice. And that's not the way Ronan deals with shit, but he thinks that he understands what that means for Adam, now.

"The thing is," Ronan adds. "Stupid and reckless is what I do."

Adam shuts his eyes, but it doesn't do any good. His composure breaks down around him until he gives up on it entirely, throws the blankets off and scrambles out of bed.

Ronan stands up to meet him halfway. Adam throws his arms around Ronan and pulls him as close as he can.

"Don't go back to DC," he whispers to Ronan. "Stay here with me."

-

The alarm goes off. Adam makes a soft disgruntled noise and burrows his face into the pillow, leaves Ronan to deal with it even though he's the one who sets an alarm for weekend mornings because _I don't want to sleep through my day off_. Goddamn liar.

Ronan reaches over Adam to flick the alarm off and then lowers his arm around him. Adam makes another one of those soft noises, pleased this time. Ronan shifts closer, spoons up behind him and noses at his hair. He rests a hand over his chest, thinking lazily about whether they need to go shopping today or if he can throw something together from what they have in the fridge.

Adam rests a hand over his, tracing a thumb across his knuckles, and then he shifts and settles back against Ronan in a very deliberate way.

"Oh, really," Ronan mocks in a whisper. He skims his hand down to rub at his cock gently through the fabric of his shorts. Adam sighs. "Are you even awake?"

"Mmmh," which is really as much of an answer as Ronan needs. He loves sleepy morning sex -- the comfortable warmth to everything, the care and tenderness, the way Adam can never really stress himself out -- and they don't get enough chances for it. On weekdays Adam goes to class and Ronan gets himself lost in some new damn neighborhood hunting for junk furniture to rehabilitate. It's possible that Adam has a point about not sleeping all day on weekends, but Ronan's not going to say that. He's just going to draw Adam's shorts down around his knees and grip his cock, feel it harden in his hand.

"Fuck, this is so good," Ronan murmurs with his lips against Adam's skin. He runs his hand up the length of his cock. "This is already so good."

Adam exhales with an _oh_ that shoots straight to Ronan's gut. He groans and kisses Adam's neck and starts jerking him off slow and easy.

Adam's hips rock, forward into Ronan's hand, back so his ass rubs against Ronan. It isn't anything like enough friction, except that it's Adam, so --

"Shit, that's amazing, God, keep doing that." Ronan's hips are working too now, grinding his cock against Adam. "Shit, this is perfect, everything about this is so fucking good." He nips at Adam's shoulder. Adam moans.

"Do you know how fucking hot that is?" Ronan asks. "Do you know how much I like to hear you panting for it? To know that you want me?"

Adam sighs "yes." He doesn't really answer: _yes I know,_ or _yes I want you,_ or _yes this is hot_. It's just all of it, yes to everything.

"You want more?" Ronan's fingers are slick with precome. He slips his hand between Adam's thighs and rubs it onto his skin. "You want this?"

"Yes," Adam says, heated. "God, Ronan, yes."

"Okay. Okay, I've got you, you're good." He puts his cock between Adam's thighs, gives a few careful thrusts until it slides easily. He holds a hand down firm on Adam's hip, because he's trying to rock back before Ronan's ready. "Shh, you're good, I'm going to make this good for you."

Adam shivers all over and melts under his hand.

Ronan presses his chest against Adam's back, grips his hand loosely around his cock again. He thrusts with more force this time, and it rocks Adam forward, pushes his cock through Ronan's hand.

Adam is panting hard by now, but Ronan keeps up his litany, gets his mouth close to his ear so he can hear his voice even if the words don't process. "I love that you love this. I love that you let me have this, fuck, I want this so much. I want to keep making you make those sounds, Jesus," because Adam just cried out. He does it again a moment later and clenches his thighs tight around Ronan.

" _Fucking hell_." Ronan bites his neck and Adam comes with a gasp. He manages a few short thrusts before he comes, his teeth stamping incomprehensible words into Adam's skin. 

They rest for a moment in the afterglow. Or, _Ronan_ does; Adam rolls over in bed, eyes bright, and props himself up to look at Ronan, who could easily go right back to sleep and probably will.

"Stop...shining at me."

Adam lies back on his side next to Ronan, kisses his nose just to be irritating. "Close your eyes if I'm bugging you."

Ronan shuts his eyes. "Doesn't matter. I can hear you thinking. What's there to think about?"

"I'm wondering how you can get me off this often."

"Hand on dick. Boom. That's my secret."

"It isn't, though."

He cracks one eye open. Adam is still impossibly alert, but more serious now. Not sad, but -- serious.

"Nah. It isn't." Ronan stretches until his back cracks. "You've gotten really good at telling me what you want."

"But I didn't say anything."

He shrugs. "I've gotten really good at listening."

"And yet you can never hear me when I ask you to lock the front door." Adam frowns at him. "I think you're wrong. I think it just works because it's you."

Ronan would fucking love for that to be the case. He can't even look right at the idea for how bright it is in his mind -- not today. Maybe someday. "Oh yeah? I'm just such a stud you can't help yourself?"

Adam thwacks him with a pillow, but joke's on him, now he doesn't have a pillow when Ronan pushes him down flat onto the mattress and kisses him.

"Our breath is terrible," Adam observes.

"So go brush your teeth."

"Nnh." He coils an arm around Ronan's shoulders, keeps him where Ronan can't move to let him up. "I want to stay right here."

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this fic, you can [reblog it on tumblr](https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/612798609632772096/loosen-up-and-lose-your-mind-shinealightonme)!


End file.
